


Continuing Education

by ineptshieldmaid, Trojie



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Eames and Ariadne work together, Eames would be a terrible graduate advisor, Gen, Partnership, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 10:26:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6234982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what it takes to stay alive in the field of extraction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Continuing Education

**Author's Note:**

> This is one from the vaults! Sometimes we, uh, kind of lose track of things. And then we find them again! Yay!

The 9mm Browning on Eames's bedside cabinet is in stark contrast to the decor of his bedroom, from the tiny-paned leadlight panels at the top of his windows to the delicate apricot wallpaper and the ancient polished rimu floorboards, but Eames has come to terms with this aesthetic issue. The little houses in Thorndon are expensive, but he couldn't resist, and the constant atmosphere of expensive DIY and restoration in the suburb allowed him to quite brazenly have toughened glass put in all the windows with none of the neighbours so much as commenting.

Having said that, though, the gun control laws in New Zealand are prohibitive. Most of the populace have never seen a hand gun in their lives, and sneaking one into the country is almost impossible when you don't have Eames's particular special skills, which is why when Eames needs to really lie low, he stays in New Zealand. At least that way he knows he won't be shot by anyone _incompetent._

The sound of his front door being bashed in is an even starker contrast to the dawn chorus of tuis and warblers outside his window. Eames is out of bed in under a second, grabs the Browning and hits the wall, out of sight of someone approaching his bedroom door. 

Eames's stay in Wellington ends with him shooting a man in full Kevlar body armour through the throat. And he's a little sad, because he liked the townhouse and the neighbourhood, but he'd rather keep his life. He's on the next available flight to Auckland with only his emergency bag on him and the Browning dumped in the harbour before he works out who must have sent the assassin, and then his blood runs a little colder.

Ariadne won't answer her phone.

His next destination is going to be Paris.

* * *

The first job Ariadne took, after the inception, was with Eames. In fact, all three of the jobs she’d taken after the Fischer job had been with Eames. Mostly that was because she genuinely liked working with Eames, and partly it was because he’d been in Europe a lot at the time, and partly it was because... well, because no one else had asked her.

Eames is a people man: he’s not much good at architecture, and he hates to be the dreamer when he’s forging as well. So Ariadne made mazes for him, and went under with him on the job. She had a gun, now - a real one, and its counterpart in every single dream. Eames had made sure she could use it, dreamed them up a firing range and stood behind her shoulder while she put round after round into the targets, getting closer to dead centre every time.

‘Not half bad,’ Eames said to her, with his special ‘you continue to surprise me, Ariadne’ grin. She got a little shiver of pride off it, the same as she got when Miles complimented a model or a set of drawings. 

‘My mother used to hunt,’ Ariadne said, with her ‘you don’t know everything about me, Mr Eames’ smirk, and, flipping the safety on, held the pistol out to him.

‘Handy.’ Eames handed the pistol right back to her. ‘Care to get us out of here, my dear?’

Eames didn’t need looking after, Ariadne knew that: if she weren’t there he’d have been running one-man cons, using stock architecture or whomever he could hire at the time. Still, she watched him work with an entirely unreasonable sort of pride. Eames was _good_ at what he did, seducing and gambling and threatening and bamboozling his way to what he wanted. He was good at what he did long before she showed up, but Ariadne got a kick out of it anyway. If Eames was a performer, she was his set designer and security rolled into one, shadowing him in and out of other people’s heads, holding his stage together in her mind and a Walther P99 which felt just like her mother’s in her hand.

She was aware of two things acutely: one, Eames thought of her as a partner, not an apprentice; and two, not everyone they worked with had the same faith in her as Eames did. Rodriguez had looked around the banquet hall she’d built and just nodded.

‘Not bad work,’ he’d said. ‘We’ll take it. Give it a few years and you could be really good,’ he’d added, with a faint, impersonal smile. 

Ariadne had bristled, and the candles all along the tables had sputtered suddenly. Damn. 

‘Ariadne’s a good all-rounder as well as architect,’ Eames said, mildly enough, but stepping a little closer to her as he did. ‘She went three levels deep with us on the Fischer job.’ And then into limbo - but they don’t talk about that.

‘Well, this is a two-man job,’ Rodriguez said shortly, and that was supposed to be the end of it. It wasn’t, of course: Ariadne did go under with them, and she was the one who brought the chandelier crashing down on top of the dinner guests, causing chaos and giving them enough time to get away and look for Eames. He appeared a few moments later, at a dead run, waving an envelope above his head.

‘What I don’t understand,’ Rodriguez said, packing up the PASIV, ‘is why you’re not doing cushy corporate jobs with Arthur.’ Ariadne glanced quickly at Eames, who was administering another dose of sedative to keep the mark under, and then realised Rodriguez was talking to her. 

_Well, Arthur didn’t ask me_ , Ariadne thought, and said nothing.

‘My jobs are more fun,’ Eames said, coming up behind her.

‘Eames’ idea of fun will get you killed or arrested sooner rather than later,’ Rodriguez told her, apparently serious. ‘He's not exactly known for being a teacher.'’

Eames slung one arm around her shoulder and squeezed gently. ‘My _colleague_ isn't going anywhere,’ he said. ‘I look out for the both of us.’

* * *

The other thing about New Zealand as a place to lie low is it's a bastard to get out of. Eames manages a surreptitious smoke in the pedestrian walkway (read: alleyway) between the Domestic and International terminals at Auckland Airport, and then has the choice of changing in either LAX or Heathrow in order to get to Paris. Choices, choices. American 'safety' procedures or the inconvenient fact that he's legally dead in the United Kingdom? Body scans don't bother him and he's got a selection of passports, so in the end he picks LAX and spends ten hours arguing with himself about whether or not to call Arthur when he hits the tarmac. 

'This had better be important,' Arthur says when he picks up, but he doesn't sound angry, or too worryingly calm, which suggests he hasn't heard anything. If Eames were a praying man he'd be thanking something right now.

'When was the last time you heard from Ariadne?'

There's an intake of breath on the other end of the line. 'Tuesday,' Arthur says. 'Should I have heard from her?' Eames checks his watch, still set to NZ time - it says Thursday. So, Wednesday, in Arthur's timezone. Worst case scenario, twenty four hours radio silence.

'She isn't answering her phone.'

'And you think something's gone wrong.'

'I had a visitor this morning. Knocking heavily on the door, rearranging the furniture, that kind of thing. All dressed up for a party, too.' Eames feels like an idiot, but you have to be careful what you say in airports these days. He worries at his thumbnail with his ring-finger, scratching at the quick. He gave up biting his nails when he was ten, but enough of his forgeries have had the habit that it still lingers enough to niggle at him sometimes.

'I thought she was working with you.'

'She was. The job finished.'

'And you let her go home? To her actual home? Goddammit, Eames-'

'I know, alright?'

There's a pause from Arthur's end. 'Where are you now?' he asks.

'LAX, waiting for a connection to Paris.'

'Right. Who was the last job for? I'll see what I can find out while you're in the air.'

'Rodriguez.'

Eames gets the distinct feeling that Arthur wants to punch him. However, all the point-man says is 'He's in Guatemala right now. She had better be alive when you hit Paris, or I am going to kill you myself.'

'Fair enough.'

Arthur hangs up. Eames tries Ariadne's number again. It goes to voicemail immediately, and he hangs up rather than listen to her voice. 

_I look out for the both of us,_ he'd said. But he hasn't looked after them both. He'd treated her like he treats everyone he works with - like they know what they're doing. And maybe she does know what she's doing with a maze and a PASIV and even with a gun, in a dream at least, but when she'd got her cut he'd asked her where she was going next, and she'd smiled. 'Home,' she'd said. 'Gonna sleep for a week at least.'

And he hadn't thought about it. He has four places he refers to as 'home' (three now that he's filled someone full of lead in the Thorndon house) and the chances of someone knowing all four locations are slim. Even Arthur probably only knows three of them. Probably. But Ariadne has friends, and a flat, and a protective Masters supervisor, and all of those things are in the same city. Eames racks his brains to try and recall if she'd told Rodriguez where that city is. Probably. Too friendly by half, that girl. 

He should have taught her better. But it's so easy to forget she might need teaching at all. 

Eames sits down to a cup of crap airport coffee and stares at his phone until the boarding call comes. As he's heading to his gate, he gets a text from Arthur.

_You need equipment? Left some stuff in the warehouse after last time. Good luck._

Eames's lockpicks are on a ring of Allen keys in his luggage. Much as he hates to stop for anything, he doesn't want to show up unarmed. Apart from anything else, he's only successfully broken someone's neck with his bare hands once, and he's seen Ariadne's kitchen knives and they are definitely sub-par. She might have her Walther to hand, but that would only be constructive if she was there, and compos mentis.

The warehouse is pretty much just as they left it after the Fischer job - all the whiteboards wiped down and the paperwork gone, but lawn chairs still arranged next to rickety tables. And in the drawers of the desk Cobb had been using on his late nights there's one of Arthur's bloody Glocks and a full magazine. Oh, and a first-aid kit and a money-clip full of Euros. Eames grabs everything but the money and goes. Remembering to lock the door after him on the way out, of course.

* * *

‘Gonna sleep for a week at least,’ Ariadne had told Eames, but here she was, three days after touching down in Paris, wide awake at some weird pre-dawn hour. A little thing like the three-hour difference between here and Dubai shouldn’t bother her, not when she’d been coming and going between Paris and Seattle for years.

But it did. Or something else did, and the end result was the same: she was awake, and she wished she wasn’t.

She made a list. _Things Ariadne has right now:_  


* a week’s worth of groceries - yesterday’s victory, having finally overcome the urge to order takeout and forget about it  

* a doctor’s certificate for missed classes - beautifully forged by one Mr Eames, master of misleading penmanship  

* a Walther P99 - illegally obtained - and several magazines ready to go at a moment’s notice  

* the better part of a month’s homework to catch up on, and  

* the pretty strong desire to put herself under and _dream_ , just for the hell of it, just until the Somnacin wears off - to build just because she can, and wake up knowing no one’s getting hurt because of it.  


And the counterpoint. _Things Ariadne does not have right now:_  


* the slightest idea where Eames goes when he’s not in Europe  

* a PASIV of her own  

* any hope of getting back to sleep right now  

* a way of calling any of her Parisian friends - the burner phone Eames made her get when they passed through Prague is working, sure, but the actual normal phone she keeps around for perfectly normal, not-criminal-at-all conversations is out of battery and typically, she can't find the charger  

* a fucking clue where she’s going with her life anymore.  


There. It felt a bit better to set it out like that. She didn’t know what she was doing - whether she was doing a degree or whether she was doing extraction, or whether she was doing both. If she really wanted to do either of them. She knew she was _good_ at her degree, she was fucking brilliant at her degree, but brilliant isn’t the same as destined for. And then there was extraction, and she didn’t know if she was good at that. Cobb had thought she was good, but Cobb wasn’t there; and Eames said she was good but Eames wasn’t there either, not anymore, and Ariadne didn’t even know what standard of _good_ they were measuring her by. It could have been her architectural brilliance or her ability to bring the streets of Paris down on top of their heads or the fact that she doesn’t have much in the way of common sense. It could have been any of those or something else entirely and she didn’t know how she was supposed plan her life if she didn’t even know what it took to be good in the field of extraction.

Then - _Click_. It was just a little noise, the sound of a door opening when it ought to be locked. 

There was someone in her apartment.

There was someone in her fucking _living room_ , and by the time he came through the bedroom door, Ariadne had her pistol in hand and the safety off. There was someone in her doorway and it wasn’t Eames and he had a gun. Her first shot went wide, _thunk_ into the doorframe, but so did his, because he evidently hadn’t been expecting her awake and on her feet.

Seconds later he was down. There was a sickening crack as his head hit the bureau.

_This is what it takes to stay alive in the field of extraction_ , Ariadne thought. There was a wet rattling sound in the room, and it wasn’t her own breath.

* * *

Eames is at the door of Ariadne's apartment building when he hears three muffled gunshots in quick succession. No-one else even looks around - the noise is faint and far away-sounding (thick walls, plaster and brick, and room-sized air pockets, and distance) and your average layman has not actually heard a real gunshot. 

Eames, on the other hand, knows exactly what a gunshot sounds like and he decides, to hell with stealth and propriety, and bolts through the door. Admittedly he's not one hundred percent sure the noise came from his destination, but he isn't willing to be cautious and get there too late if it did.

As he charges up the stairs, he starts doing the sums. Three shots. Assume one each from Ariadne and whoever the other gunman is. That leaves one shot unaccounted for. Either she got them, or they got her. Or all three shots were Ariadne, the beginner; a miss, and then something non-fatal, and a finisher, maybe. But no, anyone sent on this job wouldn't be the kind of person to let the target get off three shots, and Ariadne isn't the type to shoot an injured man in the head. Two shots from her, Eames would buy. But the third, the insurance? Not Ariadne.

Or all three shots were the gunman, making sure the target is down. But again, no. Professionals don't waste ammunition. One shot, one kill. Fucking headcases, the lot of them. Eames hates assassins, and not just because he's had to fend off a number of them. They're all maths, and they don't see people as anything but objectives and obstacles. 

A fourth shot rings out. Eames feels the red mist start to descend.

The door to Ariadne's apartment is ajar. Eames stops, tries to calm his heartrate, and yanks the Glock out of his pocket. It's the middle of the night - the streets are full of people but in a largely student-populated building like this, most of the rooms are either empty or partying, making noise. No-one has turned out to find out the source of those suspiciously loud noises. No-one ever does. Women get knifed on street corners, screaming blue bloody murder, in this modern day and age, and everyone assumes the noise is next door listening to The Sopranos at an antisocial volume. Desensitised, the lot of them. 

With that thought, Eames eases the door open. 

It opens a lot faster than Eames was expecting - Ariadne has yanked it open. She's breathing hard, a wild look in her eye, a bag over her shoulder. 'Let's go,' she says, as if she's unsurprised to see him. As if she's a professional. 

Behind her is a corpse. Very definitely a corpse. Eames looks back to Ariadne, and there's a red-brown streak down her face like a tear-track, where's she's plainly wiped at blood-spatter, and she's holding her Walther. Safety's off, but her finger's not on the trigger. Arthur would be proud. 

Eames isn't sure if he is. Relieved, yes. Proud? Proud that he's apparently managed to help turn a bright, academic young woman into someone who can fire a third shot into a body just to make sure? He doesn't know, and this is not the time to worry about it.

But 'Thank God,' he says, and she holsters the pistol. He swipes his thumb down her cheek to wipe off the blood, and then jerks his head at the door, and they walk away.

* * *

Ariadne graduated _in absentia _from the École de Chaillot, but for what it's worth, she did graduate.__


End file.
